Economics

Anthologies and monographs characterised by their interdisciplinary nature and which address current subjects of interest in the field of consumer sciences are published in this series. The series is dedicated to interdisciplinary consumer research and examines the whole spectrum of issues related to consumption. It welcomes contributions from the entire gamut of academic disciplines and will appeal to all those interested in dealing with challenges relevant to consumers on an in-depth academic level. The series aims to strengthen cooperation between the different academic disciplines and to promote the transfer between academia and consumer politics and/or consumer protection agencies.

This series of publications is dedicated to the processes of change and challenges arising from the digitisation of the economy and society. It focuses primarily on the question of how the fundamental rights to privacy and informational self-determination can be guaranteed and provides a forum for interdisciplinary academic exchange. It presents theoretical, empirical, basic and application-oriented work and contributes to the foundation and objectification of the public discourse on these topics. In particular, results from the ‘Forum Privatheit’, which is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, appear in the series.

Due to rapid changes and unexpected developments, academic studies of international politics are becoming increasingly complex. In order to examine constantly shifting objects of study, research on international politics must continually revise the theoretical and empirical frameworks and methodology employed. Moreover, both academic research in general and international politics studies in particular should go beyond mere analysis and offer normative guidance to policy makers. The challenges of such a multilevel field of research can only be met by an interdisciplinary approach, in which important insights from both political science and philosophy are applied to studies of topics ranging from armed conflicts, political and religious extremism, migration, identity issues, contested economic structures and regulations, and international law-making to humanitarian intervention and climate change. This book series consists of anthologies of works by philosophers and political scientists and experts from related subjects as well as monographs written by authors with the respective disciplines as a background. All texts submitted for publication in this series undergo a rigorous process of double-blind peer review, based on initial editor screening and anonymized refereeing by at least two referees. The editorial process is overseen by the editors and supported by two editorial assistants.

Analysing economic phenomena from a sociological perspective poses a number of transdisciplinary challenges which are both highly topical and relevant. This means that the complementary research fields of economic sociology and political economics are among the most dynamic areas of the social sciences in both theoretical and empirical terms. Economic sociology offers analytical perspectives on the logic of economic activity and the way it is embedded into social structures, which are arranged in a continuum of market relations, networks, organisational hierarchies and other coordinating bodies. Research papers from this field therefore deal with a vast array of subjects, ranging from entrepreneurship, innovation and organisation in the workplace to monetary economics and financial markets. Political economics complements and supplements economic sociology’s focus on action by taking institutional interaction between economic and political systems into consideration and by treating the state’s involvement in the organisation of economic processes as particularly significant. In this respect, the issue of variations in capitalist market economies in the context of globalisation assumes a central role. The series of publications entitled “Wirtschaftssoziologie und Politische Ökonomie” (Economic Sociology and Political Economics) therefore provides a forum for theoretical and empirical works from these research areas with no thematic restrictions.